Euronews

The first remains of victims from last week’s downing of a Malaysian airliner will be flown to the Netherlands on Wednesday, where the slow identification process will begin.

A refrigerated train carrying bodies arrived in the Ukrainian government-controlled city of Kharkiv on Tuesday.

Dutch forensic scientists said they had counted around 200 bodies but they had not been able to inspect all the train’s carriages.

“There were more people on the plane, there are more remains to be found and we are not in a position to put all the remains together [for each individual person] What we are sure of is we have 200,” said Yan Tuinder, the head of the Dutch expert mission.

At the crash site in eastern Ukraine, observers say the priority is to make sure all bodies are accounted for but after that it is to investigate the disaster. But due to what they say is evidence tampering, that will not be easy.

OSCE spokesperson Michael Bociurkivv explained one of the problems:

“You know it’s impossible to say, but for example today at the side of the road there was some human remains in a small plastic bag that hadn’t been picked up.”

Reporting for euronews from Kharkiv, Maria Korenyuk said the first plane with 50 victims’ bodies would leave Ukraine on Wednesday, with the rest being flown to the Netherlands before the weekend.

Once they have arrived in Eindhoven the remains will then be taken to the military barracks in Hilversum for identification.